So it seems that for most of our past, this would actually have been beneficial. The article says: "We found that drinking a sugar-sweetened drink with a meal

So it seems that for most of our past, this would actually have been beneficial. The article says: "We found that drinking a sugar-sweetened drink with a meal significantly decreases fat use and diet-induced thermogenesis (heat production)." So if food is relatively scarce then this is a good thing. Feels a bit weird to optimize diets for couch potatoes. The article doesn't say how exercise was done, so I assume it was none.